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Baena Journal; No Olive Branch in the Embattled Olive Groves

Manuel Cubillo had filled his glass, cleared his throat and was ready to test a syrup of an unspeakable vivid yellow-green. Big slurping sounds followed. Mr. Cubillo beamed.

''This is as good as it gets,'' he said, putting down his glass of olive oil. ''It's fresh and a little peppery. Probably picked and pressed the same day.''

Mr. Cubillo takes these sips for a living because he is an oil taster and this, the middle of the winter, is a hectic season for his palate and nose.

It is harvest time in the groves around Baena in southern Spain, a town at the heart of the biggest olive-oil producing region in the world. Across Andalusia, in fact, some 300,000 people are taking part in the age-old ritual: men with long poles whack the branches full of swollen olives while the rest of the family is down on the ground, collecting the fruit falling on the sheets beneath the trees.

Outside the German Baena plant for oil pressing and bottling where Mr. Cubillo works, farmers lined up recently to deliver their loads of ripe olives. A heady, leafy aroma oozed from the crushing presses and filled the air. It might have been an image of rural bliss and bounty. Except that in Baena and the hills beyond, a rebellion is brewing.

The farmers are angry at the European Union's plan to reduce its olive oil subsidies. Of the union's annual subsidy of more than $2 billion, close to 40 percent goes to Spain, which will suffer most from any cuts. Officials at the union's headquarters in Brussels say that above all they want to make changes to reduce fraud. Instead of paying a fee for oil reported to come off the presses, officials in Brussels argue that a more fraud-proof method would be to count the claimant's number of trees as a basis for subsidies.

Union inspectors have said there is evidence of widespread fraud in Italy where a small farm will commonly sell oil to a larger one, with both then collecting subsidies for the same produce. In Spain, where 75 percent of the farmers sell to cooperatives, a method that is more transparent, the record is considered cleaner, though not impeccable.

Spanish farmers are outraged at the plan because they say it would punish them for someone else's sins and cut subsidies that make producing olive oil viable.

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''The profit margin is already very small,'' said Joaquin Garcia, who heads the federation of farm cooperatives in Cordoba. He said a Spanish farmer receives $4 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of oil, $1.65 of which comes from the European Union.

In Baena, a whitewashed town of 20,000 people, where more than half live off their olive trees, farmers are not sitting still. Last summer, they helped organize a march in which more than 50,000 farmers and workers demanded that the Spanish Government defend their interests. They were present a year ago when olive growers chartered 22 planes and flew to Brussels for the day to protest.

To old-timers here, whose faces are as lined as their beloved trees, the battle is a case of desk-bound bureaucrats deciding about real-life issues they do not understand.

''You may get 5 kilos from one olive tree and 150 kilos from another,'' said Francisco Tarifa, a burly farmer who also heads the local cooperative. ''How can you subsidize a tree? Some have one trunk, some four. They behave differently if you prune them or water them or kill the weeds.''

Any remaining respect for the officials in Brussels dissolved last year when Franz Fischler, the European Commissioner for Agriculture, visited Baena. Mr. Fischler, who is Austrian, gamely picked an olive from a branch, ate it raw like a cherry, and pronounced it good. That story is still prompting contempt in a country where everyone knows that this bitter, indigestible fruit must be carefully pressed or cured in brine for weeks to become edible. ''Having a raw olive is like eating an unplucked chicken or an uncooked potato,'' scoffed Mr. Tarifa.

This hallowed tree with its whorls and silver foliage has, of course, been a mainstay of life around the Mediterranean at least since biblical times, but only in the last few decades has its treatment drastically changed. Weeping branches are getting pruned so the hydraulic arm of a tractor can reach the stem and shake it till the fruit drops. Irrigation and fertilizer systems are creeping into the groves. At the German Baena cooperative mill, conveyer belts take olives to be washed, then crushed and spun in modern machinery. Gone are the stacks of mats where the flesh was pressed till the glistening juices dripped down the sides. Today's oil is stored, not in clay jars, but in stainless steel. For the Baena region, the next step is to take on Italy, which buys almost half of Spain's oil exports and then bottles and resells them under prestigious Italian names. ''We've been great at producing, but bad at selling ourselves,'' said Mr. Tarifa, demonstrating how his cooperative is copying some of Italy's best sales gimmicks. He got permission from the Duke of Baena, who lives in Madrid, to use the duke's name and coat of arms. ''There it is, on our grand reserve,'' he said, holding up a cut-glass bottle worthy of any boutique. ''And, of course, the cloudier the better.''

Just one thought: Did Mr. Tarifa ever put butter on his table? ''Butter,'' said Mr. Tarifa, twisting his face. ''It's terrible for your health.'' He paused to find something worse. ''Putting butter in food,'' he said darkly, ''is a mortal sin.''